He's 48, laid off from Hewlett-Packard after 11 years, suddenly chief cook and bottle washer. She's 53, manager of a medical clinic, working 35 hours a week, suddenly Ms. Breadwinner.

"I was making $120,000," Mr. Bacon said. "We're now relying on my wife's $3,000 a month, and we're barely able to pay our mortgage. My wife's stressed and tired, so I try and have a good dinner waiting when she gets home. I guess that's what a good wife would do. I guess I'd make a good wife."

Mrs. Bacon said she's suddenly feeling the pressure of providing. "Women are still underpaid, and I don't have the education Paul has, so there's no way I'll ever bring in his income."

As the recession grinds on, men are being laid off at a far greater clip than women. The numbers are startling: More than 80 percent of pink slips handed out since the recession began in December 2007 have gone to men, because of their disproportionate slice of jobs in hard-hit fields such as construction and manufacturing, according to government data.

In November, women held more than 49 percent of jobs. And because many are with more-stable employers such as schools and hospitals, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics suggests women soon could outnumber men in the workplace for the first time in the nation's history.

Heather Boushey, senior economist at the Center for American Progress, said the gender gap in layoffs during tough economic times is not new, but this time it's far more dramatic.

"Men losing more jobs than women has been the case in every recession since the early '80s, which was the first time we saw this massive structural switch away from manufacturing," Boushey said. "The losses are much sharper now, and the gap between men and women's unemployment rates has never been as high" in the past quarter-century.

If this recession drags on, there could well be more jobless men with employed partners such as Greg Hobbs, a Sunnyvale, Calif., software-development manager who was laid off in 2001 from Nortel. After three years of looking for a new job, Hobbs and his wife, who works at IBM, decided to flip things around at home.

"With both of us working and three kids at home, we realized there was a void in our family by not having a parent at home, helping get them involved in extracurricular activities," said Hobbs, now 51. "It was obvious there was a need there, so we decided that I'd fill it."

Today, with a 12- and a 17-year-old still at home, he misses the workplace at times. But he said he has no regrets.

"I was laid off when my son was 5, so to him his dad has always been home," Hobbs said. "And he's never really asked me, 'Why don't you work?' because he has other friends who have similar arrangements at home."